This piece was originally run by Bankrate.com around Halloween, but I'm just getting to it now. It details some very bad financial happenings their readers have suffered. In the spirit of "misery loves company", here's part 1:
Buying half of a foreclosed house
We agreed to purchase a foreclosure home in October 2004. We were told there was a problem with the title of the home, which delayed the purchase of the home for almost two months. We finally closed in January, after the title company told us the problem was fixed. I was supposed to pay my own property taxes, but I never got the bill. Finally at the end of June, I called the auditor's office to ask for a bill. They promptly informed me that we didn't own the house -- the deed had never been filed.
I immediately called the title company and they calmly told me they weren't able to file the title because they only had half of the deed. The title company had gone to closing without clear title! As it turns out, when the property was foreclosed upon, the owners had two deeds, each stating ownership of half the property. But only one of the deeds was recorded for the foreclosure -- leaving us with only half a house. We continued to work with the title company to get this problem corrected and are still waiting for whoever owns the other half of the house to start mowing the lawn, washing the dishes and paying some of our bills!
Yikes! This is a horror story. Sounds like the title company better get this fixed or they are looking at a big lawsuit.
Click here to read part 2 of this series.
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